Shots Fired (3 page)

Joe looked up when Kyle Sr. suddenly stopped talking to see what had stopped him. He followed the man's eyes to the outside screen door, where Kyle Jr. stood on the porch.

Joe understood. No father wanted his son to think of him as a failure, whether the circumstances were fair or not.

“We're talking,” Kyle Sr. said to Kyle Jr.

“Are we gonna have to move again?” the boy asked.

Kyle Sr. raised his voice and said, “I said we're talking in here, son. I don't need you standing there listening in. You go get the company truck and gas it up. You can take it into town.”

Kyle Jr. looked back, uncomprehending. “Why?” he asked.

“Because Mr. Dietrich is coming for his quarterly visit. You can pick him up and bring him out here.”

“Why me?” Kyle Jr. asked, pain in his eyes.

“Because your mother and me need to start packing up,” Kyle Sr. said.

From the living room, out of sight, Joe heard Joleen gasp.

To her, Kyle Sr. said, “You'll be getting what you always wanted, Joleen.”

She responded with a choked mewl.

To Joe, he said as an aside, “She never liked this place, anyhow. She's scared of Dietrich and she'd like to be closer to her people in Idaho. Maybe we'll end up there now.”

“What about Kyle Junior?” Joe asked, after the boy had left the porch.

“He loves this place,” he said with a heavy sigh. “He thought we'd finally found a place for him where we could stay awhile. He's made some friends and he's finally getting settled in. Now we're going to jerk him out of high school and hit the road again.”

Joe shook his head.

“He ain't never stayed in a place for more than a year or two,” Kyle Sr. said. “He's like an army brat, I guess. But for some reason he thought this one would take. He finally let his guard down and started making connections. He told us he really likes it—the town, the school, even his teachers. Now . . .” He didn't finish the sentence.

As Joe opened the door to go back out to his pickup, Kyle Sr. said, “Old man Dietrich couldn't have better timing. He's showing up on the day we find out about the game farm decision. He won't even have a chance to cool off before he fires me. He likes doing it face-to-face. He says that's the only way to fire a man: face-to-face. It's in
The Book of Rules
.”

“How's he getting here?” Joe asked.

“Kyle Junior is picking him up.”

“No, I meant to Saddlestring?”

“Private plane,” Kyle Sr. said. “He must have brought the jet or he'd land on our own strip.”

“How many planes does he have?”

“Three that I know of.”

Joe said, “Maybe I'll meet him at the airport along with Kyle Junior. I'll tell him the news and make sure he knows it had nothing to do with you. Maybe that will help.”

Kyle Sr. smiled bitterly. “Worth a try, I guess.” But Joe could tell he wasn't optimistic.

As Joe descended the stairs on the porch, he heard Kyle Sr. say to Joleen: “I'll hitch up the horse trailer and back it up to the front door. You start gathering our personal stuff. Mr. Dietrich
has been known to give folks an hour to clean out. We might need more than that . . .”

•   •   •

J
OE SWUNG INTO THE TRUCK
and said to Daisy, “Man oh man.”

Daisy lowered her head between her big paws on the seat. Joe reached for his keys as Kyle Jr. drove through the ranch yard in the Crazy Z Bar's Ford F-350. Joe got a glimpse of the boy's face. He looked stricken.

•   •   •

A
S
J
OE CROSSED THE ONE-CAR BRIDGE
and drove toward Saddlestring in the lingering dust spoor of the F-350, he thought of the ranches in the Twelve Sleep River valley. There were twenty or more big holdings, most owned by out-of-state executives. But beyond that fact, each was mightily different from the other.

In his experience, each ranch was a world of its own: teeming with intrigue, agendas, and characters. Each was a fiefdom with its own peculiarities and practices, its own set of rules and expectations. Ranch managers were itinerants in cowboy hats who did the bidding of their owners but, unlike the owners, had to interact with the locals. They hired cooks, wranglers, cowboys, and hands who specialized in construction, fixing fences, and wildlife management. Their employees gossiped about them, and sometimes switched ranches for better deals or benefits.
There was lots of interbreeding, and relationships formed between employees of one ranch and employees of others. Even for Joe, who was out among them day after day, it was hard to keep it all straight.

Despite telephones, email, and the Internet, most of the information and rumors from ranch to ranch were communicated daily through snippets of information relayed to the ranch communities by those who kept an old-fashioned circuit of visits, like brand inspectors, cattle buyers, large-animal veterinarians, and the almost legendary mail lady named Sandra “Asperger” Hamburger, who had delivered the mail in the rural areas on an ironclad timetable that had not wavered more than five minutes each day for fifteen years. Hamburger was unmarried and in her mid-sixties, and favored brightly colored cowboy shirts, jeans, short gray hair, and steel-framed cat-eye glasses she'd worn for so many years they were in fashion again. She was a tightly wrapped eccentric with mild autism—hence her nickname—who drove an ancient mud-spattered Dodge Power Wagon. She could be counted on to arrive at each rural mailbox on schedule, every day, despite the conditions. To her, the U.S. Postal Service was an all-powerful god and she didn't want to let it down. When she was running late by even a few minutes, she was a terror. When Joe saw Hamburger's truck barreling down a two-track road, raising dust behind her, he simply pulled over and let her pass. Otherwise, he was taking his life in his hands.

But if Joe needed information or intel on any of the ranch managers or their employees, Sandra Asperger Hamburger was
who he sought out. She knew all the names, most of their backgrounds, and most of their likes and dislikes based on what they sent or received in the mail. Often and intuitively, she knew of management shake-ups before anyone else in the valley. She wasn't a gossip, but she made it her business to know what was going on. Otherwise, she apparently reasoned, it might make her less efficient.

Some ranch managers fit right in, some contributed to the general welfare, and some were out-and-out bastards who used their positions as perches of power. A few of the ranch managers in the area were incompetent in every aspect of ranching other than being obsequious to the owner and his family when they arrived annually or semiannually, and that seemed to be enough to keep their jobs. Others were hardheaded cowmen who challenged their owners over budgets and priorities as if their roles were reversed. They didn't last long.

Kyle Sandford Sr., it seemed to Joe, was one of the good ones. He kept to himself—too much, apparently, for his own good—and honored local traditions and idiosyncrasies, or at least as much as
The Book of Rules
would let him. He was a member of the local Lions Club and he attended school activities with Joleen. Sandford managed the ranch as if it were his own, and he drove hard but fair bargains with cattle buyers, shippers, and local businesses. He didn't make dubious wildlife damage claims like some of the managers did, and he looked the other way when old-timers hunted or fished on private land they'd used for years.

Poor Kyle Sr.,
Joe thought.
And poor Kyle Jr.

•   •   •

T
HE
S
ADDLESTRING
M
UNICIPAL
A
IRPORT
was located on a high plateau south of town. There were two commercial flights daily—both to Denver—and most of the activity at the airfield was as a fixed-base operator for private aircraft. The ranch Ford was parked in front of the small FBO building, and Joe swung into the lot and parked beside it. As he did, he heard the whine of a small plane accelerate in volume in the sky as it descended.

Joe swung out and patted Daisy on the head and pulled on his hat. Between two massive cumulus clouds to the east there was a glint of reflected light and it didn't take long for the speck to grow wings and wheels.

Inside the airport, Kyle Jr. sat on a molded plastic chair and stared out the windows at the tarmac. He wore a gray Saddlestring High School hoodie, worn jeans, cowboy boots, and a Wyoming Cowboys baseball cap. It was the official uniform of every teenage boy in town, Joe thought, except for the Goths and the druggies. Kyle Jr.'s hands rested on the tops of his thighs and his head was tilted slightly to the side, as if holding it erect took too much energy.

“Are you okay?” Joe asked.

Kyle Jr. started to respond, then apparently thought better of it.

“I know this must be tough. You kind of like it here, don't you?”

Kyle Jr. nodded his head.

“It's a good place,” Joe said. “I know my girls would hate to
leave it now that they're in high school. But maybe it won't come to that.”

The boy looked up with hope in his eyes. “My dad didn't seem to think so.”

Joe nodded. “I'm going to talk to Mr. Dietrich. Your dad is a hell of a hand. He would have a hard time replacing him. I can't believe he'd let him go because of something that was completely out of his control. I'll let him blame me.”

“Thanks, I guess,” Kyle Jr. said, letting his eyes linger on Joe for a second before looking away.

•   •   •

T
HE SLEEK
P
IAGGIO
A
VANTI
II
twin-engine turboprop sliced out of the wide blue sky and touched down on the single runway with the grace of a raptor snagging a fish. It turned and roared and wheeled straight toward the FBO, then performed a quick half-turn so the door faced the building. Joe could see the outlines of two pilots wearing peaked caps in the cockpit, and once the aircraft was stopped one of the heads disappeared and ducked toward the back.

A sliding door whooshed to the side and steel stairs telescoped to the surface. The copilot filled the open hatch for a moment, looking out as if to assess any threats, then retreated back inside.

“Here he comes,” Kyle Jr. said solemnly.

Lamar Dietrich, wearing a battered wide-brimmed hat and an oversized jacket, made his way slowly down the stairs. At the bottom he paused and reached back without turning his head,
and the copilot scrambled down behind him and handed him a metal cane with three stubby feet on the bottom. Dietrich nodded toward the FBO but didn't move. The pilot danced around the old man and jogged toward a golf cart, then drove it out so Dietrich wouldn't have to walk.

The old man seemed even smaller than Joe remembered him, as if he'd folded over even more on himself. His shoulders seemed narrower although the large jacket disguised how frail he'd become. He wore lizard-skin boots that poked out from baggy khakis and he braced the walker over his thighs as the copilot delivered him to the building. Joe caught a glimpse of an overlarge gargoyle-like head, swinging jowls, and a large, sharp nose when Dietrich glanced up to see where they were going.

The electric cart made no sound as it approached the metal door of the FBO, but it obviously took a long moment for Dietrich to climb out. The copilot stepped inside sharply and held the door open for him.

Joe stood and jammed his hands in the front pockets of his jeans and braced himself.

Dietrich entered slowly and bent forward, using the walker with each step. He had bowed legs, which made him even shorter, Joe thought. He wondered how tall Dietrich was if he could be stretched out.

The old man paused and looked up, literally tilting his head until the back brim of his hat brushed his hunched shoulders. His eyes were hooded, and they took in Kyle Jr. still sitting in his chair and then Joe. When he recognized the game warden as the man who had testified at the hearing, his face hardened.

“You,” Dietrich said. “I remember you. What the hell are you doing here?”

“Came to say howdy and welcome back,” Joe said. “I was hoping I could have a minute of your time before you head out to your place.”

“I don't have time for you,” Dietrich said. He spoke in a hard and flat Midwestern tone that seemed like steel balls being dropped on concrete, Joe thought. Then, looking around the room, Dietrich said, “Where's Sandford?”

“I'm Kyle Junior,” the boy said, leaping up. “My dad asked me to give you a ride to the ranch.”

Dietrich's eyes got larger as he assessed Kyle Jr. He obviously didn't like what he saw.

“How old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

“Sandford sent a seventeen-year-old
boy
to pick me up?”

“I'm a good driver,” Kyle Jr. said. “I've been driving since I was fourteen.”

“This is unacceptable,” Dietrich said. “I said I wanted Sandford here. Not his boy.”

Kyle Jr. obviously didn't know what to say, and his face flushed red.

Joe stepped in and touched Dietrich on the shoulder. “Please, I'd like a minute if I could.” Then to Kyle Jr.: “Why don't you step outside, Kyle?”

The boy was out the front door immediately, and Dietrich looked angrily to Joe for an explanation.

“Look,” Joe said, “I know about you. You can't be as mean as
you come off. You run a tight ship and you're a success in business, and I admire that. I disagree with your idea of building a game farm, but I admire your success and you've got a good ranch manager in Kyle Sandford. The decision on the game farm went against you. It wouldn't have mattered—”

Dietrich interrupted to say, “What a man does with his private property is his business. This isn't Communist China—yet. No bunch of bureaucrats have the right to tell me I can't do with my own property what I want to do.”